1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains generally to mechanical guns and projectors, and more specifically to magnetic couplings which offer improved interaction with and operation of paint ball gun bolts.
2. Description of the Related Art
Paint ball guns have enjoyed much popularity for a number of years. The sport offers the challenge and intrigue of competitions and battles that stimulate a person's consciousness. However, unlike actual wars, hunts and the like, the combatants may return day after day to continue to test and refine their skills.
In a paint ball competition, the paint balls themselves are designed to be propelled by a gun which uses pressurized gas as the propellant. The paint ball is designed to withstand normal movements inside of the gun, while being sufficiently frangible to break upon impact, subsequent to being propelled. When the paint ball strikes a competitor, it will break and mark the person who has been hit. Consequently, the ball must also be sufficiently soft to not cause harm to the person, though it is understood that in most competitions the person will be wearing basic protective gear such as goggles and the like to protect body parts which would otherwise be too easily harmed.
Modern paint balls are typically comprised of gelatinous compounds which offer both the necessary toughness to survive gun use and the rupture strengths that are low enough to lead to breakage on impact. Unfortunately, it is also known that many factors can affect the characteristics of the paint ball outer membrane, including but not limited to such diverse factors as temperature, humidity, manufacturing tolerances, production or post-production handling, and the like.
Since the paint ball must be sufficiently soft and frangible to not harm the competitors, and to reliably break upon impact, and since there are unpredictable factors that may weaken the ball, a paint ball gun must be designed to handle the paint balls as gently as possible. Otherwise, paint balls may break inside the gun, even prior to firing. When a paint ball does break, the gun may be disabled until the competitor cleans out both the paint and the gelatin capsule. When this occurs deep inside the gun, the time required for cleaning may be too great, leaving the competitor defenseless against another competitor. Consequently, it is highly desirable to have the most reliable handling of paint balls within the gun possible, and simultaneously to facilitate rapid bolt removal and cleaning.
A typical paint ball gun must receive a single paint ball and position the ball into the breech. Subsequently, the gun will expel the ball using a blast of pressurized gas. The source of paint balls is typically a magazine, which will hold a plurality of paint balls therein. The magazine in turn couples to the gun just ahead of a bolt, and typically at an angle offset from parallel to the gun barrel. To ensure a single paint ball is placed into the breech, a bolt travels parallel to the gun barrel, and in a first position permits a single paint ball to pass down into the path parallel to the barrel. Next, the bolt will travel forward, both moving the paint ball forward into the breech and simultaneously blocking the passage of any additional paint balls from the magazine into the barrel region. The bolt additionally blocks back-flow of propellant into the magazine feed path. This handling of the paint ball by the bolt is one of several critical controlled movements that are made by a paint ball gun, often in very small fractions of a second.
Once the paintball has dropped into the breech, any further movement of the paintball within the breech is detrimental to the performance of a paintball gun, particularly when provided with force-feed loaders. Most desirably, the ball will remain centered below the feedneck while in the breech. When the ball is so located, the next ball in the feedstack will be elevated as much as possible, by virtue of resting on the highest point of the first ball. By so elevating the second ball in the stack, the top leading edge of the gun bolt is less likely to clip this second ball. If, instead, the paintball is permitted to move off-center, the next ball will not rest on the very top of the first, but may instead rest somewhere lower. In such instance, the second ball may be within the diameter traversed by the bolt, and so would be more prone to being chopped during firing. When a paintball is inadvertently mis-positioned, and so interferes with the travel of the bolt, there is no provision within the linkage for halting the travel of the bolt. In other words, when a ball is in the wrong place at the wrong time, chopping is imminent.
Paintballs are inconsistent from batch to batch and brand to brand. Consequently, it is not possible to selection a position for the bolt to rest and accommodate all paintballs. As a result, prior art bolts are prone to chopping paintballs of size which deviates from the size for which the gun was designed.
In addition to the proper handling of paint balls, it is also highly desirable to facilitate rapid bolt removal and breech and barrel cleaning. No matter how well a gun is designed, there will remain occasions where through some combination of timing, weather, defects and dimensional variances within a ball, and numerous other variables, a ball will break within or adjacent to the breech region. In such a case, a competitor will desirably clean the gun as quickly as possible, and without the need to resort to the use of any tools to disassemble the gun. Heretofore, this has been achieved by providing the bolt with a bolt pin which couples with an underlying ram. The bolt pin extends perpendicular to the direction of travel of the bolt and ram, and is commonly spring loaded to drive the bolt pin into engagement with the ram.
These teachings of the prior art are incorporated herein by reference, together with Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition copyright 1983, which is incorporated herein by reference in entirety for the definitions of words and terms used herein.